Is Your Business Ready for Marketing Automation?
Marketing automation has been, in a lot of ways, an absolute godsend for both B2B
and B2C organizations. Automation software takes the hassle out of sending
relevant messaging, at the best possible time, to prospects and existing customers.
This means that a company’s sales team are not wasting valuable time on low-
quality leads, and also so that marketers have more time to make more pressing
decisions.
Before businesses and marketing teams consider using marketing automation tools,
however, they need to be sure that they are ready - we mean this in terms of their
systems, infrastructure and people.
To help you understand if your business is ready, you need to consider three main
questions:
1 Is it even possible for your marketing to be automated
Before an investment in marketing automation software is made, it is important that
is known whether or not it is even possible to automate the marketing process. This
means working out where the relevant information is stored and which teams have
access to which data?
To start sorting everything out and getting your ‘house in order’, gather all your data
together, making sure everything is correctly indexed. The next step is bringing your
content together - webinar recordings, eBooks, white papers... Make sure these are
organized for when you start building automated programs and campaigns.
At this stage, it is worth your while to start thinking about what kind of message you
want your prospects and existing customers to receive.
2 Is your team on board on
For any kind of marketing campaign, especially of the automated kind, to succeed,
everyone must be pulling in the same direction. The executives of the company are
going to need a compelling case for investing in a new platform.
Emphasis should be placed on what automated marketing campaigns can do for a
business, explaining the results of successful campaigns such as higher conversion
rates and higher-quality leads.
Next, the sales team should be briefed. Inform them of just how automated
marketing can benefit them. Tracking each action, downloading an eBook, for
example, tells the team what that lead is interested in.
It is logical to give the team a heads up because if the first campaign is successful,
then they are going to receive a lot of new leads that they will need to be ready for.
3 Be sure you have firm goals in place
Make sure that you know what it is that you want to achieve and then determine just
how an automated campaign can help you to meet that goal. The case that was
presented to the company execs for investing in the platform is going to be a good
jumping-off point for establishing your goals.
For example, here are some possible goals:
● Increase leads
● Increase transaction value
● Increase conversion rates
Different people should be assigned different tasks. For instance, select someone
that can set measurable goals to increase next quarter earnings by 10%, then build a
strategic plan to achieve that.
You should also choose somebody that can put into motion and monitor the
programs that you are building.
Third, someone else should be tasked with managing and producing content - this
includes landing pages, emails and other supporting campaign content.
Finally
If your business does decide to invest in an automated marketing platform, keep in
mind that it could well take an amount of time before positive returns are seen. There
may also be some niggles to work out when it comes to data quality - this is because
there is going to be a period of transition as your teams get to know and understand
the platform.
That being said, as long as you keep moving, and learn from the initial efforts... your
successes are not going to be far away.